Pure Imagination
by LudFelic
Summary: A new family, a new house, a brand new start, what could change all the happiness that's going around. How about a story that no one ever thought to tell the family. A dark water lake, leaking dark feelings that maybe they shouldn't live there after all; and then a tragedy that they would have never expected hits them from behind, and then another. Now left alone to stay hidden.


Pure Imagination

I live alone now. I never used to. To be honest with you, I really am happy where I stand, content with myself in this house. Yet at the same time, everything that happened could have all been prevented with better observance and a closer eye to the unexpected, somethings that just can't be explained by adults. Some things are best explained by the simple beings we call children.

I was a newlywed to a handsome man by the name of Alfred Johns. His hair was the softest thing in the world, with its golden glow and a cowlick that stuck straight up from his part that naturally occurred every time he brushed it. His black framed, simple glasses covered his deep ocean blue eyes that I could drown in if I looked in too deep. Of course he was taller than me, by a good 7 inches; him being 5'8" and me a simple 5'1". It does suck sometimes and other times it's great. He always wore dark faded blue jeans and a simple collared shirt. It didn't matter the color, all that mattered was if it was collared or not. If it wasn't, perhaps a t-shirt, he would wear it under a collared shirt. Oh and it always had to be a button up as well, but he never wore a tie, ha, he didn't even wear a tie with his tux to the wedding. I married him for his humor and many other things but, he made me laugh, always. No matter the occasion, not matter how upset or sad I was, he'd always crack a smile on my face.

But being newlyweds, we had to compromise with our spaces. Whose apartment are we to move into? What do we get rid of or keep? Or should we buy a house? Both of us had our crummy out-of-college jobs that we would have quit in a heartbeat if we had the chance. Our savings were…dry of course, but we opted to buying a new house after we settled down and both of us applied for better jobs. So the saving and looking for better jobs began. I moved into his larger apartment complex. It was a great deal larger than my one roomed place that always stunk of cat. He lived on the second floor of a large living complex. If anything, many old people lived there. I bet every lower floor had an old couple residing within its walls. That is completely fine by me but if we ever planned on having a family, we'd have to move. His apartment was beautiful. It was a newer complex so everything had state-of-the-art kitchen appliances, and new furnishings that made me wish I had moved into this place when it first opened. The front door read the numbers "326" in gold and when you opened the door, light would hug you. There was the small entry hallway and a door to the left. It was a small closet for coats. You'd take your shoes off at the door and slide into the opening where a small loveseat couch sat facing the okay sized flat screen TV. If you looked left of the couch, you'd see a door that lead to the only bedroom and to the right, an awesome kitchen. That's where I belong. It's a decent sized apartment. Lucky Al, his parents give him a hand every month with a few extra hundred dollars.

"My place sucks in comparison to yours." I snarled under my breath.

"Oh I'm sorry, is my place better than yours? I can hardly understand why?" His sarcasm was not making me smile. I wanted to punch him. "But now you don't have to ever see that smelly place ever again. You reside here, with yours truly, the hero, Alfred Johns." He playfully nudged on my shoulder. I sat down on the couch, more like slumped down and sank into the old beast of a couch. Al sank down into the other seat.

"You know, for both of us being 23, we're doing pretty good in comparison to some of our friends from college. We have our own place, we at least make some money, we have each other and maybe even soon have an actual family. Just think, you went to school for five years to get your masters in art and you are going to have to throw it away to stay at home while I be the real man and work off my years as a lowly minimum waged worker for the rest of my life." His last little statement deeply concerned me, though I don't think he was being serious.

"Yeah, we'll move and start a real family. I don't think we'll stay here for long, do you?" I placed my head on his lower arm.

"Na, we won't be here too long, I mean, this little guy might be a while but still, we should get out of this town." He placed his large warm hand on my stomach, "Ya, it'll be better perhaps out in the countryside?"

I quickly looked up at him, "Wait, you actually bought the house?! With what money?!" My medium length dark brown hair covered my right eye as I sat up.

Once more, he took his warm hand and brushed the hair from my hazel, gray eyes, "My folks back in countryside Japan thought it would be nice if we moved into the village next to theirs. And the house was a steal, it wasn't worth anything. I'll have to fix it up but, it'll be our home, for all three of us."

I could feel a few large tears forming in my eyes, I nodded, "Yes, it'll be perfect."

"See Lilla, it'll all be fine. We'll just need to save up a little more and we'll move out of here. The drive isn't all that long either. I went up there with the real-estate agent and it was a good hour from where we are now. The place is beautiful for where it is. The village is small and mostly farm land and the house is at the top of the mountain covered by the forest and plant life. We will be surrounded by nature, perfect for painting." He almost sang the last part of his sentence while drawing in closer to me. I can't say no to this, even if he hadn't already bought the house.

"Fine, that's the place."

"Oh oh! He also showed me the lake that's behind the house a ways. The locals say some weird things about that lake though, or that's what the agent claimed anyway."

"A lake?"

"Yes. A small lake, but a lake. I'll show you once we're up there. I know you'll love it, and so will that little tyke." He ruffled up my hair as if I was the child growing inside me.

"Hey cut it out!" I fixed my hair, "When will we leave then?"

"In a few weeks."

And those weeks quickly turned into days. We packed everything, though there wasn't much to pack in the first place. Boxes occasionally made their way into the small hallway and everything came off the walls. We rented a moving truck and honestly, it didn't get filled all that much. The only thing that was really taking up any room was the old couch, and maybe the TV, but besides that, small boxes and our 2 bikes filled the back of the truck. I slid the last box into that truck and Al closed it behind me.

He looked at me, "Ready?"

I nodded, "Yup, ready as I'll ever be."

"Great, get in and you'll see what I've been talking about."

He stepped into the driver's seat and I hopped into the passenger side. We both shut our doors and he pulled out the truck key from his pocket. He started up the car with a loud rumble and growl. "Ah, nothing like the sound of an old diesel truck, eh?"

"Umm, sure, if you say so."

He rolled down his window and put it into gear, we were off.

Not even an hour passed and we were already in the small farming village. Farmers were out tending to their fields as we drove passed on the bumpy gravel road. Small farm houses passed our views every now and then. "So where's this house you were talking about?" I was honestly confused. All I could see was flat land and the mountains were way out in the distance, or so it seemed.

"It's right up that hill." He pointed down the road, and then I saw it, the mountains. The road lead right into them. Trees shaded the road and small stubs of grass made their way through the gravel. Bushes and plants of all kinds covered anything that wasn't the road and eventually I could see the house.

The driveway was covered in grass and the pathway to the house was as well. From just looking at the house I could tell Al and I were going to have a hard time fixing it up. A few small concrete steps lead up to the wooden framed house. The front doors were off their hinges, lying in the door frame and a few windows had been broken off their hinges as well and were lying in piles of glass. As he finally rolled up to the house and parked it, I was able to see the full extent of the damaged, massive house. I stepped out and carefully moved about in the tall, calf high grass. Every piece of the house was made of the local dark oak-trees and many of the dark clay shingles that were supposed to be on the top of the roof had slipped off and were broken on the ground. I walked up the few steps and walked through the doorway. The house, on the inside at least wasn't so bad. Maybe a little weather beaten and dusty but besides that, it was perfect. From the doorway, there was a room directly to your left, and to your right was a huge room. All the way in the back was the kitchen with large windows spanning across the whole side of the house. Walking in even further, there was one large bathroom at the back of the house, complete with a large bath, three sinks and a small toilet.

I ran back outside, Al wasn't even out of the truck yet. I pulled him out of the truck and wrapped my arms around his neck, "Al, Al, Al, it's perfect! I completely love it!"

"Really?!", he finally hugged me back as we spun in the grass, "This is great! Now all we need to do is fix it up and we'll be good to go."

"Yah." I let him go and looked around the rest of the property, and lo-and-behold I found the back shed that was ready to topple over. I opened the splintered wooden door and found everything from hammers and nails to a rusted, old tricycle that the old owners must have forgotten about. I slowly walked in, looking up and down at the busted up storage containers that held everything. It was filled with junk, and many other things, but to my eyes, junk and cobwebs. I kept hearing noises, weird noises, like people knocking on the tree trunks and things running through the grass. So I walked out of the shed and looked around. The house was a few feet from where the shed was. I could hear Al from inside the house, making his silly remarks and walking around, but I don't think it was him that I was hearing making the noise. I then looked into the forest and saw a faint walking trail, or that's what it seemed to be. The noises grew louder when I looked into it, and I thought for a second that I had saw something on the walking trail a few feet in front of me. I walked on the trail to see if I could find it. It appeared again a few feet in front of me. I tried to see it again. The noises grew even louder and eventually I found myself at the edge of the walking trail. The sounds then stopped as I looked up and saw the lake Al was talking about. It was fairly small, but as I looked in it, the water looked as if it had been poisoned, as if someone had mixed black ink into it. Another noise came from behind me, it sounded as if a child were giggling while they ran through the bushes and grass. I quickly turned around and saw, nothing. The wind picked up and I then heard the waves crashing up against the pebbles along the shoreline.

I turned around and stared into the water. "It's as if only darkness dwells in this water."

I was truly disgusted by it. Not due to the fact that the water looked black but by the fact that it seemed to reek of evil and hatred. The child noises returned to my ears and I turned back around, but this time, I ran back down the trail. The noises were so loud as I ran back to the house in shear panic. I ran up the stairs and into the house and grabbed on to Al. I had a cold sweat running down the sides of my face.

"Al, there's something out there!"

"Out where? What's wrong with you?"

I pointed out one of the windows and into the forest, "Out there! It's like it was following me! And the lake, it's, it's… I don't now…"

"Oh the lake. Yah you found it? I heard from some of the people in the town that the lake isn't safe to drink from because of the chemicals that are in it and no fish live in it. It's okay to swim in though."

It's as if he wasn't hearing anything I had said, "There were noises of children in the forest. I could hear them."

He grabbed onto my upper arms, "Hey, there isn't anyone up here besides us, and there aren't any children in the village or the forest so just chill, everything is fine. We'll fix the house up, you'll have our little kid-o and we'll be a happy family."

Hs reassurance did help shed the tension that I had and after a few days, it was like it never happened. We had begun our renovations on the house, all the way from fixing the roofing to putting all the doors and windows back on their hinges. We broke some of the floor boards and fixed them with spare wood scraps in the old shed. While Al did work on the house, I pulled out all the grass from our gravel road and front yard. As I did, I found out there was a place for a flower garden in front of the house and another in front of the shed. And so the search began in the shed for flower seeds, if there was any. I looked for some time and eventually, I found a few packets. I walked out of the shed though covered in cobwebs and dust but I was successful and that's mostly all I cared about. I dusted off the packets of seeds and looked at what they were, " _Mixed variety flowering plants; contains carnations, small sunflowers, yarrows, blackeyed susan, and sweet alisons."_ The picture the package had was a mixture of flowers ranging from bright pinks to vibrant yellows. In my head these flowers would do the job nicely.

I went back down to where the gardens were; I went for the one by the concrete of the house first. Larger river rocks had been placed to form an area where the garden stopped and started. I ripped open the flower package and sprinkled the flowers in their designated area and lightly patted some dirt on top. I did the same in the other garden. By then, the small pack of seeds was empty.

Weeks passed and finally the house was a place you could actually live in. We finally moved all of our things in. The TV and couch made it into the large family room, and our bikes lay on the side of the house. Everything else went everywhere else. We brought back the truck and grabbed our small car that we left at the apartment. We drove back to our real home and I laid down on the warm wood floor in satisfaction. I also had a baby belly now, and that was the one thing that I couldn't stand.

Al laid next to me and put his hand on my belly, "And now you can relax until this guy comes along." He smiled as we both laid there as the sun shined its way through the windows. "We did it; we made this our home."

I smiled, "Ya this will be great."

And not soon enough, I had our little boy. I didn't leave the house for his birth. Al helped me in the bathroom. That day was one of the hardest yet, greatest days of both our lives, besides getting married. I remember Al holding his son in in his arms and pressing his forehead against his small little boy. "Arthur, that's what we'll call him, Arthur K. Johns, my little tyke." He had a small patch of blonde hair and he had the lightest of green eyes. He was perfect, just as I had imagined. And we were now a family of three, in a house in the middle of a deep forest.

Shortly after Arthur's birth, what may seem as if I'm just being paranoid may seem different in someone else's eyes, everything around us changed. I was quickly reminded by the first day we had moved here when he was being born, a child's voice ran in the back of my head, the winds picked up and I felt as if I had done something wrong having birthed him there. The dark figure I had followed into the forest and down by the shores of the lake, had for a second appeared in front of me and seemed to be watching Arthur come into the world; as if it already had a plan for what my son was going to do. And by the time I had a chance to think about what I had seen, it was gone.

Weeks, months and almost a year passed since then, and the image of what I had seen that day still haunts my dreams. But I won't tell anyone what I had seen, they won't believe me, just as Al didn't believe me that day. So things moved on.

It was almost Arthur's first birthday when things really did start to change. His small patch of blonde hair had grown out and now was thin nearly white hair all over his head and his eyes had darkened a tad. For obvious reasons he was slightly larger and was almost able to run without falling face first on the ground (not saying that never happened). We were getting ready for his little party the three of us were going to have. I ran out into the shed to find the hammer. I opened the door and looked through a few things and realized it wasn't in the shed. So I walked out and noticed Arthur, barely on his two little feet, with his blue shorts and yellow t-shirt, walking passed the shed and onto the faint walking trail.

"Oh honey what are you doing out here?" I ran over to him, with my back slightly arched and arms stretched out ready to pick him up. He turned around and I swooped him from the trail and into my arms, "Honey, what are you doing out here? I thought you were eating lunch with daddy."

He stared at me with his green eyes, confused as any child would be. I mean, if I were going to go on an adventure in the woods and suddenly my mother stops me, I'd be confused. "Let's go back inside sweetie and daddy will help you with the rest of your lunch." I walked up to the house and through our open doors. It was a nice sunny spring day, so of course all the windows were open. "Al, did Arthur finish his lunch?"

I saw a head stick out from the wall dividing the kitchen and the living room, "Umm, no, I thought he was still in the dining room eating it. Is he n-?" He noticed me carrying Arthur, "That answers my question." He ran out from the kitchen and grabbed on to Arthur and swung him around in a quick circle, "My little man skipping out on the best pb and j ever? How could you?"

Arthur started to giggle as Al pressed his forehead against his, "Let's finish your food and then you can go bug mommy, k?" Arthur just looked at him, not really yet understanding anything his father was telling him. They walked into the dining room and I went back outside to find the mysteriously disappearing hammer. I walked out and noticed the shed door had been completely closed; it never closed completely. So I tried to open in. With a great deal of tugging and pulling I got it open and the hammer was on the ground. I bent down and picked it up. "Well, I must have missed it then."

After that, I tried to ignore the little creepy things that happened to all of us, except Arthur. We had his little party and by the end of the day, we were all pooped. The next day, more weird little things happened around and outside the house but we weren't going to let those stop us from enjoying our lives in the house. Years passed this way until Arthur was about four. He was just starting to learn that his mind was a great thing for keeping him from getting bored.

He constantly told us about these people that lived in the woods and they wanted us to never follow them. He always explained that these 'people' or what he mostly called them, creatures, were these little black things that followed him around when he went for walks on the trail to the lake. They always talked to him about never going into the lake or bad things would happen. It was the same thing every time we sat down for diner and explained how our days went. And eventually Alfred had enough of these things. One night during dinner, he just went off.

"Arthur, I know your imaginary friends help keep you from being so bored up in this house but you need to stop thinking that way. Nothing bad is going to hurt you if you go play in the lake. It's all going to be okay, and these little forest people need to leave you alone or I'm going to have to do something about them. They seem to be doing nothing but making you paranoid about where we live and what we're surrounded in."

I could see small tears forming in Arthur's eyes as he looked at his father in sadness, "But daddy, I'm not imagining them. They're all real, they're everywhere, they're even in the house watching us eat." He pointed at an empty chair in the corner of the room. "He's right there and he wants me to go play with him outside."

"You will do no such thing, not this late at night." Al had slapped his fork down on his plate and scared both Arthur and I. "I will not allow you to go outside if these things, creatures keep occurring." Arthur looked down at his plate and then back at the seemingly empty chair. I felt a cold chill hit the back of my neck. Arthur gave what looked like a nod and looked at Al, "He says he'll show you what he's been telling me not to do."

Al quickly stood up and pointed in the direction of Arthur's room, "Go to your room now!" And so he did, calmly, without argument, no fuss. He just stood from his chair and walked with his hair covering his face.

"What was that about?!" I had no idea how to react.

"He needs to stop with this _monsters in the forest_ business. It's redundant."

I grabbed my plate and stood up from the table, "That's fine, just be kinder about it if it ever comes up again."

He looked at me as if I had said something that made him sad and regret what he did, "Yes, I will do my best."

"Good. Now I'm going to clean up a bit and go to bed as well. You can go to bed if you want." I walked into the kitchen.

"Umm yes I think I will." He stood up from his seat and picked up his plate, "I'll wash this off and head off to bed." He put his dishes into the sink and kissed my forehead as he passed me, "I love you and Arthur. I'm sorry about tonight. I'll take care of everything in the morning."

"That sounds like a plan." I did the dishes while everyone else got ready for bed and snuggled in. Eventually I got ready for bed as well and walked into our bedroom. I saw Al already asleep and snuggled up in our blankets. I pulled up my sheets and laid down. Being slightly awake, Al drew closer to me and wrapped his arms around me from the back. I quickly then fell asleep.

But that night was the last nights that I would ever get a full night's rest. While Arthur and I were sleeping, Al had gotten out of bed thinking he was hearing a noise of a child. He stepped out of the house and followed the noise and what looked like a shadow of a child. As he followed it, it lead him down the faint walking trail to the lake. The noises all stopped the second one of his bare feet accidentally stepped into the chilled, black lake water. The waves wrapped themselves around his foot and up his calf and they managed to grab onto his other leg and pull him in. As the water dragged him into the lake, he fell and tried to grab on to the roots in the pebbled shoreline, but with no avail. His nails dug into the ground as he was slowly being pulled into the lake, "Help! Someone, please help me!" The water made up to his chin as it now filled his wide open mouth. He gasped for one last breath of air and was completely submerged in the cold lake water. He struggled while being pulled deeper and deeper into the lake, arms flailing and feet kicking. Eventually he let out the last of his dying air into the water and was gone.

The next morning I was awakened by Arthur tugging and calling my name, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, they got Daddy, they took him. Mommy, Mommy." My eyes opened and I sat up from the sheets.

"What is it sweetie?"

"They took him Mommy, just like I said, Mommy we need to get him."

I looked around the room, he wasn't there. So I picked up Arthur and carried him out of my room with me. I looked all over the house, never noticing that Arthur was telling me exactly where he was. I put him down so I could run around the house and outside better. I looked in every place possible. The car was still here, where could he have possibly gone off to, it's not like him. I didn't even notice that Arthur was no longer where I had left him. While I was searching, Arthur followed his creatures down the trail and down by the shores. That's where he found him, Al, lying face first in the pebbles and sand.

"Daddy, you can't sleep in the water, that's not good. The monster will get you. You need to get out of there."

"Don't go near your father, he'll get you killed. Don't touch the water." The figure repeated this over and over again, but Arthur wasn't listening.

Without even thinking about it, Arthur tried to get his father out of the water by grabbing one of his father's submerged hands. He stuck his hand in the water and grabbed on to Al's. The water quickly wrapped around his small hand and up his arm. The figure shook its black head and faded away with its last words to Arthur, "I told you, you'd be okay without him and now you will share the same fate as your father." This time the water quickly dragged him face first into its cold depths. Small bubbles floated to the surface, and he too was gone.

I was still looking for Al when I saw that black figure again. It was sitting on the front door frame, and then I heard it, "So we have done our job. Have you done yours? We like you, we will keep you safe. We will show you where those men have gone."

I ran over to it, "What, you know where Al is?!"

It disappeared and returned over by the trail, "They're over here."

I ran down that trail faster than the first time I ran down it. But my running quickly stopped as I fell to my knees seeing the body of the man I had been looking for. I crawled over to Al's body, grabbing on to him and rolling him over on my lap. His lips were a gray purple and there was no color left in his skin. His glasses were gone as well and his hair covered most of his eyes. Silence was all there was. Tears quickly covered my face and fell on to Al's freezing pale cheeks. And just as the last of the fat tears uncovered my eyes, I saw Arthur, lying in the grassy shoreline, not moving a hair. I set Al's body down and ran over to him and picked the rest of him out of the water. More tears made it impossible to see. His skin still had a slight pink to it yet his body was so cold. His pjs were nearly falling off of him because they were so heavy with water. And the only words I could say were, "Why?! No! Why, why, why?!" and then a smaller voice from behind me cleared its way through my screams.

"You are now safe, from the evil spirit of the lake, the cursed lake that kills all who touch it. It's always been this way, always and forever."

I screamed at it, "How could you let this happen?! If it was so bad, why did you bring them here?! Why?!"

"The lake, it's only happiness is the death of others. Its sole purpose is to drag people to their deaths."

"What?" I couldn't think of anything else to say; it didn't even answer the question I had asked.

"I only wanted to help you and Arthur, but Alfred, he wanted nothing to do with us but we also tried to help him. Long ago, a child drowned in this lake, and her soul forever was stuck in its waters. Slowly the water turned black and we came to help anyone that came into that house. She used to live in that house, with another woman, but she left soon after the death and she hasn't returned since. This child's soul has set itself on killing anyone that touches the water. We warned Arthur to not touch the water and he listened but the ghost of the child had better ideas. She lured Alfred out into the night by making him believe there was indeed a child out in the forest. He followed her so far that he stepped into the water and…"

"And you didn't do anything to stop it?!" I wanted to kill the thing but I knew I'd never catch it, "Then what about Arthur!? He can hear you! You said he listened to you!"

"Not until he saw his father in the water. He wanted to save his father and tried to pull him out, but he too, touched the edge of the water and was pulled in."

"I-I see, is that so…?"

I couldn't say anything more, all I could do was stare at the bodies of my family. Eventually, I found the courage to stand, and found even more to set Arthur down and find the shovel in the shed to bury their bodies. Again I told no one, because again no one would believe me. Or that's what I felt for many years.

For over three years I sat in that house, day after day, only hearing the voices of my lost family lingering in the back of my mind and the screams of a girl. The forest creature would appear every now and then, carrying a small colored flower every time and place it on the front porch. We'd also talk sometimes and I would try and keep the weeds from completely covering the house, but it was hard to do it by myself. One day I was pulling the weeds from the garden by the house and having a small talk with the creature,

"I finally grew a tail. Wanna see?"

I giggled some, "I didn't know you could even grow a tail."

I floated around and shook his butt, waving his long thin tail back and forth, "It even has a fluffy end. Isn't it neat?"

"Yeah it's cute."

We then both heard tires making their way up the gravel driveway to the house, "Someone's here?"

"It's a good thing that can't see you."

"Yup, let's see who they are and what they want. Maybe they're here to help you or maybe they found out that they died."

I looked at him angered and he quickly spoke up, "Sorry."

By the time I looked back up the car was near the house and had been shut off. I heard the door open and watch two legs make their way out of the car. The door shut and I watched the person come up to me from around the car. It was an older woman, maybe in her 60's and she had a small overcoat on alone with black pants and a gray button up sweater. I looked up her body to see she had short black, curly hair and grey eyes but no glasses. I stood up and smiled. The figure sat on my left shoulder.

"Well, hello, I wasn't expecting anyone to be coming here today. I'm sorry for the mess I have up front." I did have a mess, a mess of grass bunches and dirt. I also had dirt on my hands.

"Oh that's fine, it actually looks quite nice, much better than when I was taking care of it." She had a soft voice and she seemed to be a very nice person. But what she said really caught my attention.

"Wait, you used to live here?!" I was indeed very surprised.

"Yes, my husband and I built this house about 48 years ago and well, we just didn't want to live here anymore after what happened…"

"Um, would you like to continue this inside?"

"Oh yes, that would be nice."

So we walked into the house and sat down in the living room. "So you used to live here with you husband?"

"Yes. We were both 24 and we wanted a beautiful place to stay. The village was the perfect environment but we didn't want any of the farming homes so we looked up the mountain and found a nice flat area over by a small lake. We decided it was perfect and we built our home. We lived in it for some time but moved out after our daughter died in the lake. And the reason I'm here is because I had heard that someone had moved into the house."

"I've been living here for about seven years…"

She looked surprised when I told her how long I had lived here, "Seven whole years and I'm just now finding out?! People need to tell me these things."

I almost burst out in laughter, she was a very funny person, almost as funny as Alfred. "Yah, I've been keeping this place warm."

"Well I hope that you don't have any problems like we did."

I felt as if I had to tell her, "Well my husband bought this house and we had a child but they're no longer living with me."

"Where did they run off to?"

"The lake, they died there…"

The figure had been lying on my shoulder the entire time we talked and soon I saw, or noticed that the woman had finally saw the figure too. "That thing is evil. That's the reason our daughter died!" she tried to grab it from me and it disappeared. "That thing killed my daughter and now…" She started to cry and the figure came back.

"But I had nothing to do with her death. She ran into the water and never came back up." The figure wasn't helping his cause.

Small tears streamed down both of our faces, the old woman's more than mine, "She never learned how to swim and after that, the lake just never was the same. It never looked as blue as it did the first time we moved here. The water looked as if nothing but evil filled it. We moved soon after."

I then remembered the tricycle in the shed, "She loved her bike?"

"Her little tricycle… she loved it… My husband bought it for her on her third birthday."

"So where's your husband then, he sounds like a nice man."

"He died not long after our little girl's death, that lake sucked him in and spit him out dead. The reason I moved was because my little girl's ghost told me that this place was forever to be cursed. That anyone who touches the water will die and it won't stop until it feels like it has had enough."

I stood up from my chair, "Then why didn't you tell anyone?!"

"I did! And when I did they didn't believe me and they sent me to the penitentiary. I had just got out a few months ago, and needed to see what became of this house. I see it didn't take long to destroy everything you had."

I was more than angry yet I couldn't feel angry, "I knew I couldn't tell anyone either."

"Sit down." So I did, "Just never go into that lake and after you're done living here, burn the house so no one else may come to the fate as you and I have." She stood up, "I must be going now, but thank you for keeping this hose in good condition. It does bring me joy yet it tears my soul apart to see it."

She started towards the door and I stood up again. "So that's what you want, for me to burn the house when I'm done living in it?"

"Yes."

We walked out the door and she opened the car door and stepped in. the car started and she rolled down the window, "Whatever you do, don't let my girl tempt you into the waters. That little creature there will keep you from doing that, won't you?" she looked at my shoulder and I looked at him. He nodded and she nodded too. "Then I will be off then."

She rolled up her window and drove off down the gravel road.

"I remember that little girl. She was so happy when she took that first splash into the lake's water and she kept going in deeper and deeper. I didn't know what to do. And then she was gone. Her body never same up to the surface and then the water turned black. For the longest time it smelled of dead fish and animals because they either lived in the water or drank from it and were all killed. The man then filled his pockets with rocks and sank to the bottom too. The woman let soon after that. Then you and your family moved in and I tried to keep you all safe but, that girl got the better of Alfred. I'm sorry."

I wasn't mad; I didn't really even feel sad. At that point I was content with how everything went. "It's all okay. All I need to do is live here till I feel the time is right, then I'll burn this place to the ground."

We both nodded and that day has stuck with me since.

Now I live here, in this same old house, growing older each day, alone but content with my little forest creature to keep me company. And I lesson is to be learned here. Believe what your children are trying to tell you. Don't let what they say, slip over the top of your head. What they say might just save the lives of who they're trying to protect.


End file.
